I am still in the planning process, but in a little over a month in a half I will be tearing down my 125 gallon reef tank because we are moving about an hour away. I decided to start this thread to document this process. For the first while post may be sparse as I said I am in the planning stage. I also am aiming to use this move to correct a few issues and things I want to upgrade with my tank. Some tank info, tank is a 125 galloon marine land, reef ready tank with corner overflows. 55 gallon tank for sump, hard plumbed with pvc. Reef octopus 200int skimmer. Apex. 4 A360X lights. Neptune DOS for 2 part. Also have a UV. Tank has been running for 6-7 years. The main upgrade is going to be the sump. It just doesn't function as I would like. Also the glass I used for the baffles was too thin, and the last time I drained and cleaned the sump one of them cracked. At the end of the move I will also be either buying or building a new hood.
I have made this move 3 times in the last 6-7 years with a 120g tank and 40g sump. Total water volume of maybe 125g. Mixed reef of maybe 50-60 diff coral colonies.
The transfer takes all day. My process as follows:
1) You do not want to use any of the old water once you disturb the sand bed or start moving the rocks around. You will have years of crap stored in that sand and rock. I use the opportunity to do a large 80-90% water change. I mix up 100g of water at the new place first thing in the morning of the move (2x 55g drums). I keep a couple power heads going pointed at the surface and a heater if necessary. This water should be heated to desired temp and well oxygenated and ready to be pumped in the tank as soon as it arrives.
2) Mix 20g of water at the old place before starting the move. I used quantity of 10 of the 5g buckets that used to contain salt mix. Fill them each with approx 2 gal water. I used home depot buckets the first time but the lids do not completely seal so I had leakage in the car)
3) Before moving anything in the tank I siphon out another 20g of tank water to fill the buckets with another 20g of water so there is approx 4 gal of water in each bucket. I also use maybe another 5 gallons to fill 20 or so tupperware containers for each coral species I can get off the rocks. Probably just my OCD taking control as I'm sure you can get away with combining most of them in the same container.
4) Pull out any coral I can that I can get off the rocks and put into tupperware containers.
5) Pull out all rocks I can without touching the ones that are in the sand bed. Swish the rocks around real good in the tank to get as much waste off the rocks as possible. You don't want that waste fouling your good water in those buckets. Putting the rocks with coral on them on top of the piles in the buckets.
6) Catch all the fish and put them in the buckets with rocks - maybe 1-2 fish per bucket.
7) Pull the rocks in the sand.
8) Run my hands through the sand to get snails/wrasse/larger debris that will clog the hose when I siphon out sand.
9) Siphon out all sand. Do not put this back in the new tank without thoroughly cleaning in fresh water. Don't worry about killing beneficial bacteria as sand provides very little of that relative to your rockwork. Save a handful maybe if you want to transfer the biodiversity of the old sand bed to the new place. I never bother to do that though. I figure what ever was living in the sand is still living on the base of the rocks I pulled from the sand. The sand cleaning process is long and brutal so I usually do it a day or two after the tank move. Every time I tell myself I will just buy new dry sand but I always cheap out and spend a few hours cleaning that crap and cursing myself for being cheap.
10) Move tank. I'm usually done with this part before noon. The painstaking process is setting all the rock back up in the new tank and getting the corals placed takes the vast majority of time. If I start at 7am mixing water at the new place I usually finish the whole process by 9 or 10pm that night.
I have never worried about heating or oxygenating water during the move as its always less than a couple hours drive so things are never in the buckets for more than 3-4 hours. Anything with coral on it gets transported in the car where you can run the heater.
In the 3 moves I have never lost a piece of coral and only lost 1 coris wrasse when it was crushed by a rock.
